


The Freedoms I Wanted

by avani



Category: Smallville
Genre: F/M, Juvenalia, Not Canon Compliant, Pining, episode-related
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-26
Updated: 2018-03-26
Packaged: 2019-04-08 05:16:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 9,742
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14098050
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/avani/pseuds/avani
Summary: Lois, in Star City. (Canon-compliant through 8.10, subsequently divergent.)





	The Freedoms I Wanted

**Author's Note:**

> Written in December 2008, as an earnest teenager, deeply moved by "Bride"--and as it turned out, destined to be deeply disappointed by what actually followed. Kept as is for posterity.

Oliver offers to let her use his Star City penthouse. He tells her she can have her own set of keys, and he’ll tell the staff to go on vacation if she isn’t comfortable with that. He swears up and down he’ll tell her before he comes back into town, and he’ll stay in a hotel even then, and like he said before…before, they’ve moved on and he is only, like they decided, her really good friend now. 

Lois says no anyway. She doesn’t really care what he says; it feels too much like moving in together, starting back where they left off again (like Smallville’s Perfect Couple is surely doing, a voice in the back of her head taunts) and the last thing she wants is to reopen one relationship because another is broken and open and raw in her mind. She knows she broke things off with Ollie for a reason, a good reason, and besides 

( _“Have you ever cheated on your fiancé?”_

_ “What are you doing? You’re killing him!”  _

_ “No. Your lies are.”  _

_“Okay, okay, I take it back then. I’m sorry! Just--just don’t hurt him again!”_ ) 

it just doesn’t seem like a good idea.

Ollie rolls his eyes, tells her she’s too stubborn for her own good, and books her a room in the best hotel in Star City within walking distance of the hospital while she packs her bags and gets her files from the Planet (the bullpen is deserted at this time of night, thank God). She thanks him, a little awkwardly because it’s strange, having someone doing this sort of thing for her instead of it being the other way around. When she asks how much it costs, he starts telling her she asks too many questions, and asking what she’s going to do with herself, if she can’t snoop around for a living, and it takes her so long to explain that she’s put in a request to just e-mail her stories into Tess from Star City—if there’s one silver lining on this stormcloud, she tries to joke feebly, not noticing the expression on Ollie’s face, at least I can see the last of Tess Mercer for a few months— that she forgets to follow up on the question until she’s unpacking her things in her hotel room. 

So now Lois is standing here, surrounding by suitcases, in the middle of a lavish hotel room she knows she probably can’t afford, all alone in a city she’s never been before with three articles due by Sunday, an ex-boyfriend who’s the only person in town she knows and who’s going back to Metropolis in the morning, and one injured cousin-in-law she has to babysit until he wakes up. 

It’s not so bad, she tells herself, she’s done this before…sort of. 

At least this time she’s not living out of her car. 

*

She misses Chloe the most. 

The trouble is that sometimes, it seems like she’s not the only one who does. One night, she’s supposed to be drafting out a story about the odd feelings of déjà vu people all around the world have been experiencing for some unknown reason. It’s a totally stupid story, but Tess Mercer is just enough like her big bald boss to find it interesting in a Mad Scientist sort of way, so it’s going in the Planet. And since no one else wanted it, and she’s getting the runts of the litter where stories are concerned, at least until she sets up a network of contacts here in Star City, Lois is stuck with it. But it’s a boring story, until the moment when, in the middle of reading the fifth earnest scientist’s e-mailed reply to her questions about the anomalies in the temporal-spatial continuum, blah blah, something enormous has happened here, Miss Lane, yadda yadda yadda, Lois hears the hotel phone ring. 

She picks the receiver up a little nervously. After all, the only people who are supposed to know this number is Tess (who’s probably not looking for some girl talk) Ron Troupe, her emergency contact at the Planet (who’s not the sort to call at nine o’clock at night unless something is wrong), and Ollie (who told her three days ago that the Green Arrow was going out on a mission, no, Lois, he didn’t really want to issue a public statement 

to the press, but if he ever did, sure, the Planet would be his first choice, and by the way, not to expect any contact from him until Monday if all went well). But—she tries to ignore the thought, but she can’t, she can’t—but that doesn’t meant Ollie’s kept the number completely to himself. He might have shared it with…with someone he knew, if he thought someone should be able to reach Lois, if there was any good news about Chloe that someone wanted to tell her, maybe… 

Lois’s mouth goes dry, and her mind goes blank, but as she puts the receiver to her ear, the first thing she can hear is the General’s bark. Her stupid, confused heart can’t decide if it wants to sink with disappointment or rise up with relief. 

The General says he’s coming in at seven hundred hours tomorrow morning to check up on what’s happening around here, and what is she doing in Star City of all places? She explains a little uncomfortably about Jimmy, because she’s not sure what the General will say now that he knows that although Chloe’s missing, Lois is just sitting here waiting for better news. 

He doesn’t say anything, in the end; just that he expects to see her tomorrow morning at Star City General, and before she knows it, she’s putting down the phone again, not sure if she wants to laugh or cry. 

So she tries to imagine Chloe sitting there on the other squashy chair in her hotel room, rolling her eyes sympathetically and trying to convince Lois that her dad loves her, really he does, can’t she see that (with more in the way of mixed metaphors). 

It’s not as good as the real thing, but it helps, and really, what could be? 

*

The General’s as good as his word. Better, even. He’s there at 6:50 on the dot, but Lois has him beat, because she’s been waiting here in the hospital for him since 6:30. 

It feels like something’s thrashing around in the pit of her stomach; not butterflies, more like bloodthirsty piranhas. Bloodthirsty piranhas who haven’t eaten in weeks. Meteor-rock infected bloodthirsty piranhas who haven’t eaten in weeks. 

(She thinks she can almost remember a time when that was just a silly detail in one of Chloe’s outrageous stories about her hometown, not a viable possibility.) 

Twenty minutes take a very, very long time to go by. She gets something to eat at the hospital cafeteria, drinks three cups of coffee, rides the elevators up and down until she thinks people can recognize her, tries to decide which of the hospital staff is likely to be involved in a health-insurances scandal that she can break for tomorrow’s paper, visits Jimmy three times and asks the attending nurse how he’s doing twice, and naturally she’s standing around doing nothing when the General finally shows up. 

She feels guilty. She feels like she should be even more ashamed of herself than she already is. And she can’t quite forget that this is the first time she’s laid eyes on her father in almost three years, and he’s only here (she tries not to remember, but she can’t help it) for Chloe (just like last time). 

The elevator doors open, and the General is standing there, looking like he wishes he were anywhere else in the world, and Lois suddenly has the distinct impression he doesn’t know what to do right now, either. She’s half wondering if this was a mistake, if she should just ask him to leave before things get even more painful. 

(“ _You’re so much like your father, Lolo,” says Mommy, smiling down at Lois from her hospital bed and coughing only a little now, which makes Lois happy._

_ “And me?” Lucy’s bouncing a little, literally jumping up and down for attention. Lois wants to tell her to be quiet and let Mommy rest, like the General told them to do, but Mommy just laughs at Lucy and ruffles her hair.  _

_“You’re too much like me, sugarplum,” says Mommy, “But Lo? She’s her Daddy’s little girl.”_ ) 

“I’m sorry,” Lois says into the silence, and her voice sounds too loud. Much too loud. “I should have taken better care of—of Chloe. And Jimmy. Um. The doctor says he might respond to the new medicine they want to try, and he’s still stable, just not awake. Or  having his wounds heal. And I swear, if I could—could go back in time somehow, and makes things better, I swear I wouldn’t let either of them out of my sight—“ 

The General steps out of the elevator, puts his arms around Lois, holds her close. “Thank God you’re all right, Lo,” she can hear him say. “Thank God it wasn’t you.” 

Lois tries not to cry. “It wasn’t me, Daddy,” she says. “It was Chloe. And Jimmy. That’s just as bad.” 

“I know,” says the General, stepping back. 

“I wish it had been me.” 

“I’m proud of you, Lo. Taking care of this Olsen character--“ 

Lois felt her throat go tight. “I should be out there. I should be looking for Chloe. But I can’t, I don’t know where to look, Daddy, I can’t find any leads, not even anything from Black Creek or from Uncle Oscar and anyone else in the CIA or from anyone at all, and I’m this close to losing it—“ 

Her dad looks down at her, and for the first time she recognizes that familiar, closeted expression: helplessness. He can’t save her like he does everyone else. He can’t tell her she’s being weak for being scared, like he did when she was four years old and terrified of the monster under her bed. He wants to help her, and he can’t. He’s helpless, too, and he’s just as scared of that as she is. 

_ (Lo? She’s her Daddy’s little girl)  _

“Sometimes,” he tells her gruffly, “a soldier loses people. Friends. And—that soldier leaves them behind because it’s for the greater good. He focuses on doing what he can instead of worrying about what he can’t.” 

“Thanks,” she whispers awkwardly, because he’s trying. “Thank you, Daddy. That helps.” But it doesn’t. Not really. Because Lois Lane is a reporter, not a soldier, and she doesn’t leave anyone behind. 

Ever. 

But for the first time, she sees him as someone who could be her father, instead of just General Sam Lane of the U.S. Army, who never wanted her when he could have a son instead. Somehow she starts e-mailing him more often. 

It’s not like they have some heartwarming father-daughter relationship all of a sudden; his e-mails are still short, still terse, and hers are still mocking, still sarcastic. They just correspond a bit more often than they ever did before. Sometimes, she even finds out he’s coming into town from something other than the daily newspaper. 

About a week after he leaves Star City (warning the doctors at Star City General that that’s his baby niece’s husband they’re treating, and they’d better take care of him or else they’ll hear from him) he sends her an e-mail saying he’s finally found Lucy again. Lois wonders when Lucy left in the last place. The last she heard, Lucy was going to university at Oxford. 

The General writes back soon:  _ she’s working as a flight attendant for SwissAir.  _

Lois’s reply is much angrier and longer.  _ What the hell is she doing? She’s got all those years of school, and a full ride at Oxford, and she’s throwing it away for a shot at asking if a bunch of overweight businessmen would like something to drink, please? I liked  _ Catch Me if You Can _ as much as the next girl, but I think it’s time our little Frank Abergale, Jr. came home and did what she was supposed to for once.  _

When the General finally writes back, she thinks he seems resigned, tired after spending all those months trying to track down Lucy.  _ It’s her life, Lo. Let her live it. _

Through the anger and the disappointment, she writes back:  _ Okay _ , and that’s all she wants to say about it, to Lucy or to Dad. So that’s all she does, letting their correspondence devolve into something trite along the lines of How are you/ Fine, how are you. Cursory, brusque, and disinterested, like the rest of their interaction through her childhood. 

But she still signs her e-mails  _ Love, Lois _ instead of  _ Lo _ . He signs his _ Dad _ instead of  _ Gen. Sam Lane.  _

For the first time, Lois lets herself hope things might just get better between them someday. 

*

She doesn’t have much time to worry about Lucy, though (for once), because there’s Jimmy, here, hurt, now. When she thinks back to making the decision to go with him to Star City, she likes to imagine that it was because it was what Chloe would have wanted, for someone to be with Jimmy while he spent all that time in surgery, or because it was the most practical thing to do. (She refuses to consider that a stray peek into Lana Lang’s hospital room had anything to do with it, because honestly, her mind was already made up by then.) 

She knows, though, that the decision must have come when she was standing by Jimmy’s bed, the attending nurse looking overworked and definitely underpaid—now there was an expose just waiting to happen—and Jimmy himself, lying there so weak and pale and different. On his freaking wedding day. 

“He’s stabilized, hasn’t he?” Lois demanded, and she knew her voice was angry and upset. She couldn’t help it. “He’s going to get better. When is he going to get better?” 

“Miss Lane,” said the nurse, who was probably already dreaming of her breakroom coffee. “I can promise that we’re doing our best to get him into shape, but that—however he got these injuries—” she gave Lois a grumpy glare as if assuming there was any way Lois could have known about how Jimmy wound up looking like he’d gotten on the bad side of a wolverine and that she wasn’t telling her just to be difficult, “they aren’t going away quickly enough, Miss Lane. We’re sending him to Star City.” 

“Star City?” repeated Lois. Her voice sounded strangled even to her own ears. 

“Dr. Charles McNider is on duty there. He’s one of the world’s finest surgeons, Miss Lane, and I assure you, if anyone can get Mr. Olsen back to top condition, it’s him.” 

“So he’s going to be all alone there? Jimmy’s just going to wake up by himself in a strange city with no idea of what any of these people have been doing to him? I don’t think so. Met General isn’t supposed to be so shabby. Aren’t you supposed to be able to fix him up yourself?” 

“Miss Lane, I think you might consider Dr. McNider’s reputation—“ 

Lois glared. “I don’t care if he’s being operated on by Dr. McDreamy, I’m not letting Jimmy out of my sight! Don’t think I haven’t realized what sort of corruption goes on in a hospital, lady, I’ve found them all—people disappearing from the records for years and years, sleeping off their comas in some secret lab somewhere—“ 

“Miss Lane!” The nurse was angry now, too. Lois was nonsensically pleased. She felt like having a fight; it was better than worrying about Chloe and Jimmy and things she can’t possibly change. “I don’t think you understand the gravity of the situation. Mr. Olsen is suffering from severe internal bleeding that, considering the sudden influx of patients we’ve incurred, we can’t deal with at the moment. And even if we could—“ she paused “—this is strictly off the record, of course.” 

“I’m not a reporter tonight,” she said, and it’s as true as it ever could be, “I’m just Lois Lane.” She gave a shaky laugh. “Maid of honor in a top contender for America’s Worst Weddings.” Just Chloe’s cousin. Just Jimmy’s friend. Just…That was all. 

“Miss Lane,” said the nurse. “We can’t get Mr. Olsen’s wounds to stop bleeding. I’m not sure if that’s a specific quality of the…attack Mr. Olsen incurred or not, but there isn’t a thing we can do. If there’s a person in the world who can help him now, it’s Dr. McNider. Otherwise, we might as well give up now.” 

Lois was quiet for a long moment, and when she looked up, she meant to make some witty, off-the-cuff comment that would show how little intimidated by the situation she was. Instead, she found herself whimpering “I just don’t want him to have to be alone.” The General would have had a field day.

The nurse’s expression softened. “He won’t have to be. One of his family members can go with him.” 

Lois was already shaking her head. “They aren’t here, though. None of them could make the wedding. And I don’t know how to get in touch with—“ 

“You’re on the list of family members Mr. Olsen recognized,” the nurse says, gently now, “and I believe you’re legally family now, Miss Lane. If your cousin is unable to go with Mr. Olsen—“ 

“For the time being,” corrects Lois quickly, but Jimmy is in bad shape, she hasn’t laid eyes on Oliver or…or anyone else since the wedding, and she hasn’t the least idea where Chloe could be. What in the world makes her think she could even expect Chloe to come back, ever? What makes her think anything in the world can ever be right again? 

“Then you’ll go with him instead? To Star City?” 

Weeks. That would be days, or weeks, or maybe even months of sitting there helpless and trapped and waiting for Jimmy to recover, if he even could. For Jimmy, who didn’t have anyone else to turn to right now and who’d only just gotten married that evening. For Jimmy, who’d named her family. 

“Yeah,” said Lois, raising her chin, and doing what the General had trained her to do: what needed to be done, no matter how difficult. “Yeah, I will.” 

~*~ 

And so she’s here, right now, staring down at Jimmy Olsen and the machines hooked up to him, keeping him alive. 

She starts to develop a pattern. At 6:00, when she gets up, she stops by the hospital to check up on Jimmy and see how he’s been doing overnight with the attending doctors and nurses. About every two to three days, this somehow ends up resulting in an argument between her and one of them about what she thinks they should be doing about Jimmy’s care and what they know can be done for him, and by the time she’s worked all of that residual anger off, it’s 8:00 and time to stop by the hospital cafeteria for some breakfast. 

She spends most of the morning and some of the afternoon out on the streets, talking to people, trying to create the precious bonds she needs with sources, taking down so many notes she goes through an average of one loose-leaf a day, praying that she can find something, anything to make up at least one story so she won’t have to write some idiot fluff piece about the secret history of Thanksgiving or some crap like that. She ignores the fact that Tess could very well use her absence as an excuse to fire her, especially if she doesn’t churn out the same quality of work that she did in Metropolis, even if Metropolis was different, Metropolis where she had her network of sources, her precious wallet of swipe cards, Jimmy there to come along whenever she needed a photographer on the spot, and a partner who was…A partner. She didn’t have any of that here. 

But there wasn’t any point in thinking about that. Tess had just given her a raise, and Tess knew that Lois was going out of town, for personal business, to take care of a fellow Planet employee, and besides, Tess definitely wasn’t going to fire her. Because, hello, she was Lois Lane, and Lois Lane didn’t get fired. Dumped? Maybe. Maybe more often than she’d like. Disliked by her employer? Sure, it was practically a career expectation for her by now. Fired? Never. 

It’s the kind of dopey pep talk Jimmy would have given her. Or maybe it was a farmboy sort of thing to say, too, if the only farmboy she knew wasn’t too busy taking every opportunity he could to make a crack about her, or flirting…with his ex-girlfriend…who seriously had the worst case of timing ever known to man…and who everyone knew he was crazy about, anyway, so what did it matter, anyway? 

She spends her evenings in Jimmy’s hospital room. She finds a plug and a USB port and works from the chair next to the window, so she can keep one eye on what’s going on outside and one on Jimmy, her fingers on the keyboard, and her mouse pointer on SpellCheck. She tries not to think about the fact that she’s misspelling more words than ever, mostly because some people aren’t around to correct her spelling for her whether she’d asked them to or not. Then she goes to check up on Jimmy’s progress with the doctors, and maybe argue a little more, depending on how much she’s argued that morning, and then she goes home to her hotel room that still doesn’t feel like home, even if she has finally given up and unpacked her things from her suitcase because she understands she won’t be going home anytime soon. 

One night she puts on Jimmy’s ABBA CD, the one she brought with the rest of her stuff because she thought in her wild state on the night she packed for Star City that somehow maybe playing it would bring Jimmy back, like something out of a fairy tale, because there is no way she’s kissing him. (Chloe can handle that particular duty.) It’s a dumb plan, she knows that, but she can’t help it, because she thinks maybe if Jimmy gets better, Chloe will know, too, and she’ll come back to Star City, and they can have a reunion, the three of them, and it’ll be like things never changed from the time they were all roommates, expect hopefully with a little less Jimmy-and-Chloe-together-time than she remembers. 

She turns it off after the third track, because god, she just can’t take it anymore, because can anyone with the least hint of musical taste prefer ABBA, for god’s sake, to Whitesnake? Even if he is Jimmy Olsen, Embodiment of All That’s Dorky About Today’s Youth. 

It’s stupid, so stupid, but it gets her through the next day. 

~*~ 

She’s typing up a piece on the Mayor of Star City’s press conference in Jimmy’s room when they come for her. Dr. McNider is leading the rest of his team of doctors as they approach her, and the moment Lois looks up to see their drained faces, she knows she doesn’t want to hear the rest of this. 

“Miss Lane—“ begins Dr. McNider, and Lois blurts out, almost desperately, trying to stall the news as long as she can. “Hold on, can this wait a moment? I need to e-mail this article to Metropolis in half an hour, and…” 

Dr. McNider, who’s been around Lois for a month now, which is more than enough to erode his professionalism, just sighs. “Miss Lane, we need to discuss Mr. Olsen’s future options. As soon as possible.” 

Half an hour later, Lois’s article is not complete. Instead, she knows that Jimmy’s wound is not getting better, though he’s still stabilized, and the only treatment the doctors can think of to try is a new one that’s barely been tested or researched before. That’s her choice, then, as Jimmy’s legal next-of-kin (even if she isn’t really related to him in the first place): choose for Jimmy to either undergo the experimental treatment or to remain untreated in hopes that he’d wake up on his own. 

She asks for some time to think it over, and they say yes. For a while, Lois just wanders aimlessly through the hospital corridors. Somehow she ends up in Jimmy’s room. She looks down at him, for what must the thousandth time, so different than what she usually remembers, and for the first time, she sits down and talks to him instead of just imagining she is. 

“You know, there was a while when I thought you were the little brother I never had.” Lois pauses to consider that: Jimmy in Lucy’s place. Hmm. ABBA in place of larceny and more-or-less pathological truancy. It’s a pretty hard trade. “Well, not that I really wished you were my brother. I mean, for one thing, the General would have eaten you alive, Olsen. But what I’m trying to say is, is: I think there would be something missing from my family if you weren’t part of it, Jimmy. And I just want you to know that—that I’m going to take care of you, no matter what, and not to worry about anything, because I’m right here, and I promise, we’ll get Chloe back—“ 

( _Arms going around her, keeping her close. The same arms that had been around her earlier that night, when they’d been dancing. She’d have done anything, then, when Lana had showed up so suddenly, to have those arms back around her again, and now they were, and it wasn’t worth it at all._

_ “I promise. We’ll get Chloe back.”  _

_ Chloe is gone. Chloe is gone. Nothing was right, nothing could ever be right again. She cries a little into the side of his jacket, but she doesn’t let herself hug him back. She doesn’t deserve to. Not after all that’s happened. Not after she lost Chloe just because she felt too sorry for herself, and her pathetic love life, and the sudden reappearance of Lana freaking Lang to be there with her cousin, to protect her.  _

_“But what if we can’t?” she asks, harshly, because she needs to prepare herself for the worst, and she breaks away from him. For good. For ever._ ) 

Lois takes a deep breath. 

“—before you know it. And you’ll be okay, and you two go set up your whole MTV Newlyweds Love Nest—well, minus the reality show stupidity, here’s hoping— and everything will be okay. Just—just trust me, all right?” She pats him gingerly on the shoulder, like she might have months ago, and gets up. 

It doesn’t take her long to find Dr. McNider again. 

“Do it,” she says. “Do the new treatment. But I’m warning you, if he turns into Godzilla or something—“ 

“He won’t,” says Dr. McNider, and she realizes with a new surge of shame that he pities her, too. “Just sit back and relax, Miss Lane. Mr. Olsen should be just fine.” 

“Yeah,” she repeats, as she watches the doctor leave to gather the rest of his associates. “He better be.” 

~*~ 

In the end, the mysterious red-and-blue blur of Metropolis is her salvation when she starts to despair. 

She sees it (him) for the first time in Star City on the night after Jimmy starts his new treatment. She’d been spending some time on the hospital roof, at first just for some air, because the minute they wheeled him back into that operating room, she thought she was going to be heaving her dinner up, and she was the one who’d been practically raised on military injuries of every sort. Then she stays, because she kind of up likes it up there, with the cool and the quiet and nothing watching her but the stars up above. It lets her think for a few minutes, a small piece of sanctuary (like Smallville used to be, a traitorous voice in her mind speaks up, but she squelches it down) in the big bad city. 

It’s been a bad night. Jimmy’s gotten worse, she suspects, but the doctors won’t tell her anything, and suddenly it seems like forever, and wouldn’t Chloe have checked in somehow before now? Unless she were—she were—No. She’s absolutely fine. She has to be. Lois can’t go through that, not again. 

And then, when she thinks it’s pretty much going to be just her and her thoughts for the rest of the night, she sees the riot of colors speed by—red and blue. It isn’t like she doesn’t know the Superdude exists—for god’s sake, she was the one who got saved by him twice in as many days just weeks ago—but it’s different, just seeing him like that, whizzing on his way to save other damsels in distress who had a tendency to dip in the psychopath end of the dating pool. 

Before she realizes it, he’s gone, and she feels guilty for leaving Jimmy down there by himself. But when she thinks back on the memory, she wonders suddenly: shouldn’t the Superdude have moved faster than he had? He could, after all; Jimmy’s photo proved that he could push her out of the way and leave before even Lois Lane, Master of Observation, could notice that he had been there. But why, then, had he been moving so slowly that she could make out his colors? It was almost as if he’d been going slowly for a reason. Almost as if he’d been looking out for, or maybe even watchi…Nah. _Go to sleep, Lane_ , she tells herself sternly, and does, but never quite manages to forget that particular thought. 

The second time around, it’s sort of her fault. A source turned out not to be as willing to reveal information as she’d assumed, and then when she got mad and started insulting him, he got mad, too, and before Lois knew it, she was looking down at a knife (again).

“Oh come on,” she starts to say, and goes to kick the knife out of his hand even though she came down on her foot the wrong way and she’s pretty sure she’s sprained it,  but before she has the chance to do anything else, there’s a rustling that’s not just the rushing sound in her ears. Lois closes her eyes, because the sound distracts her and she’s lost her chance to get the knife away from the little weasel, but instead of the pain of yet another knife wound she’s mentally preparing herself for, she feels herself pushed backwards against the brick wall of the alley, with an accompanying clatter that means Weasel Boy has probably been thrown into the Dumpster on the other side of the alley (by whom? she wants to ask at first but doesn’t, because she remembers what happened to Sebastian Kane all too well). 

There are arms around her, cushioning her as she falls against the wall and a breath on her cheek that runs just a little ragged and the consciousness of another body that makes her heart beat just a bit faster 

( _she’s ready to walk away, to “rest her heels,” not only because she wants to avoid any awkward pity dances like the one that followed their pathetic prom “date,” but also because she’s just been dancing with Jimmy Olsen and he’s managed to step on her feet at least fifteen times before she gave up and sent him off to dance with Chloe and god, her feet hurt, but he catches her hand and smiles at her—her heart’s going at what must be at least the speed of the bullet train she rode on that year in Japan when she and Lucy skipped school to see downtown—and he pulls her close, so close, and her feet don’t ache at all anymore_ ) 

and when she opens her eyes, it’s all gone, except for Weasel Boy, who is rubbing his head and sitting up in a mound of overturned trash. 

When she gets back to the hospital, the doctors, who are all as sick of her as she is of them, come over to give her an once-over. Not even sprained, they say, and wrap it up in a bandage. Some of the nurses outside Jimmy’s room, though, are idly looking through an old Daily Planet (she sees the headline: _Metropolis PD—Exposed!_ , by Clark Kent, and forces herself not to read anymore). She asks why, because there are some things Lois Lane can’t help, even when she’s tired and bruised, and Rosie, the older of the two nurses, briefly mentions that she’s been thinking of moving to Metropolis and so has been looking through the Planet’s classifieds. Lois toys with the thought of mentioning that up until last year, she’d written a good bit of those same ads, but somehow it doesn’t sound as impressive as she really wants. Instead, Lois opens her mouth, and hears herself ask, “So if you’ve been keeping up with the Planet archives, you probably heard about that article a while back about Mr. Faster-Than-A-Speeding-Bullet, huh?” 

Rosie gives her a skeptical look. “The red-and-blue blur? Who hasn’t?” 

“Yeah, well—“ The words come out in a rush, “—um, has Star City been hosting the Superdude recently?” Just for a second, she feels like she’s in junior high again—god, what a horrible thought—trying to get the scoop on a crush 

( _“So come on, Chloe,” says Lois, leaning back on one of the sofas in Uncle Gabe and Chloe’s new apartment—they gave their old one up when they entered witness protection— and raising her eyebrows. “You’re going to spill some more about this Clark Kent guy, aren’t you?”_ ) 

and hates herself for it. 

Rosie turns and shares a blank look with Karen, her fellow nurse. “Why should he? Come on, Miss Lane, you of all people should know he sticks to Metropolis for the most part. We get more of the Green Arrow.” 

Lois barely manages not to let out an undignified snort. “When he’s around. He’s not exactly Mr. Reliable, is he?” she asks, and the two nurses give her crooked smiles; in the few weeks, she’s been here, she’s discovered that complaining about the Green Arrow is the number-one way to sound like a local (something she loves to rub in Ollie’s face). “But, uh, no drop-ins from the Superdude?” 

“No,” says Karen, shaking her head and frowning a little. “Though I have to say I’m not sure why you thought you would in the first place.” 

Lois shakes her head. “No reason. Just wondering.” 

They shrug—they’re more than used to her never-ending questions and well on their way to being irritated by them, like everyone else Lois has ever met—and go on their way. Lois says good night to Jimmy and follows them out of the hospital, her head spinning. So the Superdude wasn’t as prone to making house calls to Star City as she tried to convince herself. So what? 

The third time she sees him (and the last in Star City), she’s standing on the balcony of her hotel room, drying her hair. Her thoughts are somewhere far away from her surroundings; actually, she’s thinking about what sort of article she can drum up from her limited network of sources in Star City, and definitely not trying up to one-up a certain fellow reporter’s story about some crazy freak called the Toymaker or something creepy like that. So it’s not that surprising that it takes her so long to realize that there’s a familiar combination of red-and-blue at the corner of her vision. As she turns to see it further, it dashes into motion, and all she sees is that stupid blur, again, and she’s left craning over the balcony like some sort of lunatic. 

“Come on, Lois,” comes a voice from the inside of her room and she jumps. “Wouldn’t you say jumping out a window is a bit too obvious a plea for attention? Even for you,” he adds. 

“God, Ollie,” she breathes, coming back in. “You scared me. And what are you doing inside my room, anyway? I know I locked the door when I got in.” 

“You’d be surprised what a working knowledge of locks can do,” he says, and winks, and she rolls her eyes and tells him she’s buying a deadbolt for the place in the morning. He’s brought her dinner—“because I know you’ve been working and obviously even you aren’t brave or stupid enough to try your own cooking”—and after she swats at him, she takes it and they start eating together, Lois subtly trying to find out what the Green Arrow’s been up to in the past few weeks, and Ollie not-so-subtly refusing to tell her anything about it. It’s more fun than she can remember having since she came to Star City. 

About halfway through, though, Ollie’s cell phone rings and he shrugs a little and goes out onto the balcony to pick it up. Something inside of Lois shrinks a bit, but at the same time, she has to remember that this is the life she knew she would have had if she’d decided to stay with Ollie, after all, and at least she’d already decided to give up. At least an interruption to a friendly dinner was going to be the worst of it from now on. 

Besides, she can hear Ollie if she’s very quiet and any possible compunction she might have had about eavesdropping disappear when she realizes that if he’s on the phone with that mysterious group of “friends” he always mentioned casually, something he says might spur on a new article. Not that she’d quote him without asking, or even report anything he says off the record—it just might start her thinking, like Chloe’s weird powwow with—with someone she’s not thinking about right now—about that military base had inspired that cagefighting piece that had gotten her into the Daily Planet in the first place. Another piece like that just might keep her at the Planet, Tess’s bias notwithstanding. 

“…I think so,” Ollie is saying, frowning a little. “I saw her watching.” 

A pause. 

“If she had, she’d have told me. I wouldn’t worry. What were you doing?” 

_She_? Who was _she_? 

Ollie was frowning right now. “No, no, I agree completely. I think it’s stupid, too. What the hell does ‘just wanting to see her’ mean?” He stops to listen to the speaker, and his frown grows. “I think you’re confused, and I think you need to work out what you feel, or it won’t be fair to either of them. Don’t talk to her until then. You owe her that much.” 

Ollie hangs up with a flourish and turns around to see Lois just on the other side of the door to the balcony. He raises an eyebrow, and she grins sheepishly. “Well, you can’t blame a girl for trying.” 

Oliver just rolls his eyes. “Yeah, but the problem is that you try more than most people, Lois. I’m still not going to tell you anything unless I’m sure it won’t put you in danger. I haven’t forgotten what happened the last time you got a Green Arrow exclusive.” 

“You say that like nearly getting drowned isn’t a monthly experience for me,” she grumbles but bounces right back. “So I’m guessing that wasn’t questions of universal security you were discussing?” 

Ollie smiles a little, as if there’s some secret he isn’t telling her. “Just romantic trouble on the part of one of my friends. Not exactly Planet material.” 

She gives him a rueful look. “Great. Back to the drawing board.” She can’t help it, though, that even as he walks past her towards the dining table, she can’t help but keep her eyes from drifting to the now-closed window, waiting for a certain mishmash of primary colors to appear again. She can’t help but remember that he was there for her, that he saved her (so many times, before she even realized), that he had held her close once… 

“Lois,” Ollie says quietly from behind her, “Don’t. Come on, I saved you the last tiramisu.” 

“Yeah,” she says, and comes away from the window, but when she thinks back on it, a tiny part of her falls in love with the mysterious red-and-blue blur then and never stops. 

~*~ 

The weird thing is that she gets even closer to Oliver after she breaks up with him. At first, he just comes by once in a while, bringing dinner and cryptic warnings and exasperated arguments about whether or not the Green Arrow should make at least some of what he does public (she says yes, the people deserve to know what their protector is doing; he says, no, the safety of his operations is too important). She discovers Star City by herself, sees the sunset from Star Bridge alone, and teaches herself which hotdog vendors you can trust and which you can’t. 

It changes on Christmas Eve. Ollie’s been away for the past few days—she suspects he’s been in Metropolis, but she can’t bring herself to ask, because her life there is on pause, at least until Jimmy wakes up and Chloe comes home—and she’s expecting to spend the holidays alone, once again. Just like last year. She even had the breakup to work through when everyone else was stringing up the mistletoe and holly, except in this case it wasn’t even a breakup because they hadn’t even really kissed in the first place. 

She jumped when she heard the bell ring, and peered suspiciously through the peephole—she hadn’t been in Star City long, true, but there were people who probably wouldn’t be dropping in for a nice chat—and found herself staring instead at Oliver Queen himself, uncomfortably juggling a mound of presents in his arms. 

“Gee,” she says, opening the locks and letting him in, “somehow I thought Santa Claus was supposed to be a bit more about the red-and-white than the green.” 

“Mrs. Claus and I watched _An Inconvenient Truth_ recently,” retorts Oliver, making a face at her. “Really made an impact. And Merry Christmas to you, too. You know, if you’d just filed for a change of address at the post office, I wouldn’t have to drag all your presents here.” 

So he had been to Metropolis, Lois thinks. Instead of asking the questions that suddenly seemed to be burning on her tongue, she sticks it out and says, “I didn’t feel like braving the Smallville Pony Express hitching post this late in the holiday season.” Then she turns her attention to the presents at the top of her pile. “Why the hell is Ron Troupe sending me a Christmas present?” 

“Hmm,” says Ollie, looking over her shoulder at the envelope she’s staring bemusedly at. “Clark mentioned something about a Secret Santa at the Planet.” 

Suddenly she remembers she drew Steve Lombard, of all people. Great. “Hopefully Lombard’ll take an IOU until I get back.” 

“Don’t worry about that,” says Ollie lazily, draping himself on the sofa and starting to flip through the channels. “Clark said he’d take care of it.” 

Wonderful. He’ll probably get Lombard something too nice, that would make Lombard even more convinced that she was just dying to go out with him, because ex-quarterbacks with more male chauvinism in them than in her father’s entire regiment combined are exactly what she wants in a guy. She almost decided on getting him a pair of  sweat socks on that shopping trip she took earlier in the year, but then Mr. Golden Rule himself pointed out that that didn’t sound very nice, Lois, maybe she should just go with a tie instead. At least she managed to talk him out of getting something that would make that airhead from International even more prone to bat her fake eyelashes in her direction than she already does. 

Lois sighs and unwraps Troupe’s envelope. It turns out to be a gift voucher to Metropolis Dry Laundry with a scribbled note wishing her a Merry Christmas and a reminder that next time she decided to borrow his spare shirt for her boyfriend, could she get all the stains out of it before she gave it back? (Please. As if she hadn’t run it through the washing machine three times before finally admitting defeat.) 

Martha Kent sends a basket of baked goods that are only a little stale by now and a pretty antique brush-and-mirror set that belonged to her grandmother. The General gives her a taser that’s disguised as a lipstick tube that he says his friend Oscar in R and D created for her; he forwards Lucy’s gift of a box of Belgian chocolates and an apologetic note for being AWOL for so long. Ollie sneaks his own present in there; a new state-of-the-line cellphone since, as he points out, she keeps on having her cellphones stolen and destroyed (she can tell he’s referring to when she sort-of kind-of broke hers on purpose when they were dating, just so she could prove if he was the Green Arrow. And it’s still not funny.) Susan from Accounting, who Lois took out three months ago for ice cream and sympathy when her boyfriend broke up with her for about the tenth time, surprises her with a gift certificate to her favorite store. Even Lana sends a card, albeit a rather stiff and formally worded one. 

The last package is strange; she thinks it looks like it’s been wrapped and unwrapped several times, and that’s almost enough to get Lois to open it, because if there’s anything she loves, it’s a mystery; but then she turns it over and sees the card attached that says _Merry Christmas_ in tiny letters that look ashamed of themselves (she thinks, unfairly, he might be wondering what he’s doing, sending presents to another girl when he has Lana Lang, the perfect girlfriend), and she puts it away in the second-to-last nightstand drawer where she can’t see it any longer. 

“Almost done?” calls Ollie from where he’s lounging on the couch, staring with delight at the latest rerun of _A Christmas Story_. 

“Yeah,” she says, and shoves him over so she can sit down. They watch _A Christmas Story_ in silence until Lois remembers she hasn’t given him his Christmas present. She hands him the wrong gift at first—a new silk tie, red and blue stripes with hints of dark gold—and they stare at it for a moment before Lois babbles that well, on second thought, he wasn’t exactly a tie sort of guy, was he, and hands him the electronic organizer she actually meant for him. Ollie says thank you, but he puts the tie back in the box and asks if she wants him to wrap it back up. She says no thanks, it was just a gift she thought better of giving. 

His eyes drift towards her closet, where he knows he saw the presents she had ready and waiting. She wonders for a second if he knows, or if he’s guessed, about the small mound of gifts waiting there for Jimmy and Chloe. She sent Mrs. Kent her gift back before Chloe’s wedding, because it was perfect and Lois couldn’t wait to hear what Mrs. K thought of it, and she knows the General will give Lucy her gift when she visits him in Germany for Christmas. She wonders if he can do up the math, just like she can, and figure out who she’s leaving out. If he does, he doesn’t say a word. 

They order dinner in, and Ollie even manages to get them a freshly-cooked turkey, so it’s at least something like Christmas. They sit in front of the TV with eggnog, and start making fun of the TV specials—Ollie cracks a joke that he’s going to make the executive board of QTV, the television channel he owns, sign a document swearing they’ll never let another annoying special about the True Meaning of Christmas on air as long as he’s in charge—and by one o’clock in the morning, they’re just about drunk enough or tired enough to talk again. 

Lois tells him about the last Christmas she had with her mom, when she and Lucy brought in decorations and mistletoe to make the sparse hospital room look a bit more festive and the General yelled at them for making a mess when the doctors needed to work. Ollie tells her about the last Christmas he remembers with his parents, when the house was full with gaudy Christmas trees but not the smell of pine and home cooking. They both try not to think about what a wholesome family Christmas the Kents would have had in comparison. 

Ollie gets to his feet soon after that, saying he needs to go home so he can get back to work in the morning. She asks if he’s feeling all right, and he tells her to stop worrying, he’ll take a cab. It’s not until he’s about to walk out the door that she comes up to him again, holding the long white box holding the tie out to him nervously. 

“So I guess I changed my mind again,” she says too loudly, and can’t meet his eyes. 

He smiles. “I thought so.” He holds the box up. “I’ll make sure Clark gets this.” 

*

The really surprising thing is that they keep on talking. 

Lois has been here before; she’s had embarrassing moments with people, when they wound up sharing more than they meant to, and with one notable exception, doing so usually involves in either her or the other deciding they really can’t face the other any more. Besides, Ollie is a lot of things ( _why settle for rich, hot, and famous…_ ), but dependable he’s not ( _…when I can hang out with you?_ ). But he tries. And she’s grateful for that. 

He tells her about Tess, one night. Her first impulse is to crack a joke—well, at least she’s one step up from that Black Canary chick hanging around on your balcony—but she notices the look on his face before it’s too late, and Lois has to feel sorry for one more person in the world who can’t be with who he wants to be with. He tells her he calls Tess _Mercy_ ; Lois tells him she can’t think of a person less likely to fit that nickname. He laughs. 

He tells her about how he broke up with Tess, about going out on his first mission as the Green Arrow and panicking when he was almost caught changing into his street clothes, impulsively getting into a clinch with the first pretty girl he saw as a cover. He explains how Tess came in and saw them together and assumed the worst. “Gee,” says Lois, before she can stop herself, “and I thought our breakup was bad.” To her relief, Ollie just rolls his eyes and throws a sofa cushion at her. 

It’s not perfect, but it works. 

Maybe she’s not in love with him any more (not like she feels about other people), but she still loves him, loves Ollie, in a way that feels right for her, for them. He’s Ollie, the friend she’d never thought she’d have, and she’s Lois, the pesky reporter who’s still bent on getting an interview from the Green Arrow (but not as determined as she is to get the exclusive with the Superdude) 

And best of all, this strange new friendship gives her hope, because if it worked with Oliver, who she had loved before, in her own way, she knows it’ll work with—anyone else. 

She thinks this just might be enough for her, at least for now. 

*

It’s almost the end of January when she finally opens the last Christmas present. Jimmy has just been going through what Dr. McNider is pretty sure is the darkest hour before dawn, and Lois figures things can’t get any worse, so she might as well open it and see what’s inside. With her luck, it’ll be cookies that Lana baked herself to perfection—or god, maybe another wedding announcement and request to be a bridesmaid again, this time for Lana’s picture-perfect wedding. 

To her surprise, a stack of photos sits on the top. That’s pretty innocuous enough, but Lois has thought that before and usually wound up with a few metaphoric piranhas lunging out at her. But as she goes through them, she sees faces she recognizes, happier days she remembers. 

She’s kissing Chloe’s cheek at the beginning of the engagement party, before she had a bit too much of the happy juice; she’s holding a copy of her headline about the bus  blast and looking thoroughly proud of herself; she’s giving Jimmy a goodnatured (no matter what he claimed later) poke in the side as he stared, awestruck, at his photo of the red-and-blue blur. 

She’s dancing with Clark at Chloe’s wedding. 

Below the photos, there’s a set of dishes and silverware. It’s a pretty strong contender for dopiest present possible, but Lois remembers having Clark, Chloe, and Jimmy over for dinner in her new apartment and being dismayed when Chloe and Jimmy took a rain check to have a last-minute meeting with their wedding planner instead. So she’d wound up entertaining Smallville all by himself, and unsurprisingly, he’d been aghast at the fact that she didn’t even have any proper dinnerware, even after she explained that she’d left most of that stuff with the newlyweds in the Talon so they’d have something to start off with, and besides, Smallville, it wasn’t like she didn’t have takeout most of the time, either. And then they’d argued about that and talked a bit more until Clark had suddenly, and somewhat awkwardly, said wow, it was getting late and he had to go home and milk the cows or something, even though it was only nine-thirty for big-city folk. He hadn’t mentioned the definitely-not-a-dinner-date the next day at work, and so neither had she, but he’d remembered. He’d definitely remembered. 

He’d gotten yellow dishes, too—her favorite color. He’d remembered that, too. 

She stares at it all—dinnerware and photos—spread out in her lap, and then for the first time, she lets herself cry for Chloe and Jimmy and Ollie and Clark. 

*

The doctors are grim when they give her the news. They give her the good news first and then the bad: Jimmy’s treatment has helped, and they think he’s on the road back to recovery, but now they think he might be better served in Metropolis, so they’re sending him back. Lois explodes, a bit predictably, and somewhere either around the part where she’s telling them they can’t treat a patient like a freakin’ tennis ball or the part where she asks why the hell they can’t make up their minds, she realizes she’s about to get thrown out (again) and this time, they’re not going to let her back in if she asks nicely to see Jimmy. 

And then, of course, Chloe calls, sounding tired and drained but still, still Chloe. 

“Clark saved me,” says Chloe over the phone. “It’s a long story. Is Jimmy OK? I want to see him, Lois.” 

Lois tries to sound like she’s not crying and promises they’ll be there in the blink of an eye. 

Ollie helps her pack, again. He offers to let her use the company plane, but she says she’ll ride in the chopper with Jimmy this time. She doesn’t want to wait to see Chloe again, even if she knows, and understands, that most of Chloe’s attention is going towards her injured husband. 

The ride goes by in a flash, and Chloe is there, her hair going wild in the wind the chopper is producing, throwing her arms around her and crying into her shoulder, and Lois is saying something stupid like, “God, Chloe, three times to think you’re dead is enough, all right?” 

And they wheel Jimmy out and Chloe lets out a squeak of dismay, and Lois feels, strangely enough, left out once again. Jimmy will get better, and Chloe is here to take care of him in the meantime, and Lois feels completely unnecessary. With a quick kiss on the cheek for Chloe, and a muttered “good luck, buddy” for Jimmy, she slips out of the hospital. After stopping off at the apartment that still feels like it belongs to a stranger, she goes back to the Planet, the better to get a head start in clearing out all the junk they must have put on her desk, and listening to stupid Tess’s stupid lectures about how irresponsible and impulsive she’s been and how likely the Planet is to fire her, and best of all, sitting down at her computer at getting down to work, because that’s what’s really going to make her feel like she’s come home. 

The elevator going up to her floor takes forever, of course. She pushes the button again and again because she can’t wait, and that doesn’t help, though at least the elevator  doesn’t make any stops on any other floors, because Lois is pretty sure she wouldn’t be able to stand that, and then the elevator dings, and the doors open, and she looks out at the newsroom, and wouldn’t you know it, Clark Kent is standing there, waiting for the elevator. 

He looks at her. She looks at him. She wonders if there’s anything that she can say to him anymore. He stares and stares and still doesn’t say a word, and her heart sinks a little (though she’ll never admit it). Nothing’s changed after all, she thinks, but after the long months in Star City, she thinks she can live with this, after all. She’s lived with less these past few weeks. Except:

“Lois,” he says, and it’s like he’s never seen her before. 

 

**Author's Note:**

> *Quite apart from the obvious canon discrepancies, I will note that canon did not even spare me even tiny details like Lois visiting her mother in the hospital, James Olsen's familial status, and Lucy Lane's whereabouts.  
> * Charles McNider is apparently an actual doctor/superhero in the DC Universe! Admittedly I only used his name because I wanted to set up a bad McDreamy joke.  
> * The title is a line from VAST's "Don't Take Your Love Away From Me," because song lyrics seemed Very Profound at the time.


End file.
